The Aching Darkness_A Dark Fantasy Anthology

by Parker Sinclair

“Angela? It’ll be all right. We’ve got each other.” He reached to pull her back into his arms, but she jerked away as though his touch revolted her.

  “No! This isn’t happening. I’m not one of them. I’m not a monster.”

  “Of course you aren’t. We’ll figure this out. We’ll find an antidote.”

  She shook her head, her nostrils flaring as she backed away before turning to run from the infirmary. Rye went to follow, but Miranda grabbed his arm to stop him.

  “Let her go. She needs to process things right now.”

  He nodded, staring after his wife with a longing that broke his heart. He bit down on his lip but was interrupted by Blaze’s voice crying out in agony.

  “Lianna? Lianna! Wake up. No. Please!” He was holding her in his arms. She was limp, her head lolling back as her last breath sighed out from between her lips. Blood trailed from her mouth, nose, and even her eyes, running in little rivulets into her hair, down her neck, and drenching the bed along with Blaze’s clothes.

  Lianna was dead, along with any hope that this plague could be stopped.

  CHAPTER 10

  The daylight came like a roaring beast, spreading its burning arms across the land and igniting the vampire wildings unlucky enough to be exposed to its searing rays. Rye and the others learned quickly that direct sunlight didn’t exactly kill them, the hybrid vampires, but it was mightily uncomfortable on their sensitive skin. Their vision, now enhanced, turned sensitive to the brightness of daylight. They found that the early morning hours, when the sun had yet to burn its rays across the earth, and the early evening hours, when the wildings were not yet as active as during full dark, were the only times they could venture outside without applying obscene amounts of sunblock.

  “We need to seal this tunnel on both ends,” Blaze suggested. “It’ll give us a lot more square footage to work with and reinforce the walls of the underground bunker.”

  The group all agreed. They had found others like them, sunburnt and looking for relief from the glare of the light. Some even knew how to lay down concrete. They raided the nearby hardware stores and construction sites for rebar and concrete along with huge mixers in order to pour the slabs and build the new walls. They blasted away some of the street and the above tarmac in the process, extending and reinforcing the entrances.

  As the world fell apart, the group worked to secure their new home. They watched the population dwindle as they hunkered down eating MREs and other food stores that had been stockpiled in the bunker. They kept an eye on the chaos via closed circuit cameras they’d installed all around their new compound.

  Blaze was voted leader, Rye his second in command. Miranda came in third. The trio took their job seriously, grooming their recruits and keeping order, giving them each a purpose, jobs to keep them from thinking about the grim state of the world. But there were issues and problems they’d never been trained to deal with. There were things their new, enhanced bodies needed to keep in top shape.

  When they encountered humans who were infected but not yet dead, the function of their fangs and the needs of their bodies became known in the most unfortunate of ways. The call of the blood and the inherent desire now drove the hybrids to do the very thing they feared. They fed on the humans until they were far and few between and their hunger for blood was sated.

  When the humans had all died and the blood ran out, the hybrids turned to biting the wilding vampires, draining them of their tarry red blood that ran thick and tasted foul. But it sustained them. They also raided the blood banks where the refrigeration had not yet flickered off; they filled the bunker’s freezers full of the last of the human blood donations. Rationed out, it kept them alive until they fortified a warehouse and converted it into a farm to house pigs, goats, and cows. They raised the animals not for meat but for the sustenance within their veins.

  This was how they survived. This was life now. The never-ending hunger would drive their fate from that moment on.

  As Rye stood guard, staring out across a Las Vegas no longer lit by flashing neon, the silence overwhelmed him. A wave of death had decimated the population and left but a few still alive as hybrid vampires, not human and not completely monstrous. Despite the change, his determination to thrive remained steady. Though battered and bruised from events past and wary about what was to come, he waited for destiny to move them all toward an uncertain future.

  Until then, they did what they could. They lived and they fed.

  About the Author

  Alexia is a USA Today Bestselling author who currently lives in Las Vegas and loves spending every free moment writing or hanging out with her four rambunctious kids. Writing is the ultimate getaway for her since she's always lost in her head. She is best known for her award-winning Reign of Blood series, and A Dark Faerie Tale Series.

  BOOKS BY THE AUTHOR

  Rift: An Interdimensional Novella

  The Once Upon A Death Anthology

  Scarlet Memories

  Metamorphosis

  CONNECT WITH JESSICA OZMENT

  Website: http://authorjoz.wixsite.com/themagicquill

  Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/Jessica-Ozment/e/B014OD8SFM

  Instagram: @the_magic_quill_graphics

  Twitter: @JTahbonemah

  White Matron: Deadly Secrets

  Copyright © 2017 by Jessica Ozment

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Cover Art by Jessica Ozment

  Proofread by: Sandra LeBlanc

  Book Design by Jessica Ozment

  Dedication

  To my beloved mother, Rita.

  Never forgotten, Always in my heart.

  CHAPTER 1

  Limitless

  Scanning the wondrous antique pages of the leather-bound book before her, Fey poised a nimble finger, taking careful measures not to rip the delicate paper laced with ancient celestial ink. Exposing a broad grin, she turned the page successfully and let out the air in her lungs to still her pounding heart. Before long, a growing ache at the balls of her feet alerted the girl to the fact that she had been standing in the same position for several hours without rest, but she had to keep going. It was nearly time to head back, but first, one last spell.

  Through pursed lips, she silently mouthed the words of the arduous incantation she’d been trying to prefect for weeks, being certain to motion the proper spelling signals with fluid flicks of her hands, wrists and fingers. The witch knew the complicated spell would be rendered useless if she didn’t take her time mustering her strength. The magic of her ancestors was solely based on building layers of magic over time. Each layer supported the other, and organically channeled a masterfully conjoined force. If the empath mispronounced even one word, the whole setup would be a waste and she could kiss her new job title as Matron goodbye. She intricately enunciated the primordial Latin words as they escaped from her lips and a rush of clarity embraced her body.

  The young sorceress was ready to try her luck, again. She would not dare to waiver, doing so would result in losing control of the magic that flowed from her core. Fixating all her concentration into the spell that seemed impossible to manifest, she willed herself to finish the charm with every fiber of her being. Fey Westfall, one of the most sensible witches of the era, narrowed her alluring light-green eyes and took in a deep breath for good measure. The residual aura surrounding her body warmed her pale skin like the intensity of a blazing fire and left a pleasant cherry hue upon her cheeks. The balminess offered her the look of a fierce Goddess in the prime of her life,
completely dismissing any attributes that might hint at her true age. Holding her chin high, she hastily brushed away a stray curl back behind her ear and gathered the roaming thoughts she had left before they snowballed further down the rabbit hole of her thought process. Once her conscious was clear, she bonded with nature’s peaceful, harmonious music and settled her center to the ground where it belonged.

  Extending her petite hand to the forest floor, she scooped up a bit of soil, sniffing the earthly odor. Its unrefined redolence aided her in setting the mood to prepare her body for the next stage of power. Her bloodline was known for conjuring unbelievable mystical abilities, much like that of all the various factions of witches found in her coven; these qualities are what made her power so rare.

  “Focus,” she recapped as she let go of the dirt that left behind dark brown stains in her fingernails. Fey apprehensively pulled her eyes down tight and attempted to visualize the task at hand. Think big… The words traveled to the back of her mind and flooded her thoughts like the great waves of the vast seas and oceans. Here I go, she stammered thinly as her full lips gathered together and she lowered her head.

  She took one last deep breath; instead of letting it go, she held it, desperately trying to muster the immense power radiating from within herself as tiny pings of static-electricity fluctuated throughout her nervous system and her resilient bones. So much power was surging through her that her curls stood on end, ready to shock any unsuspecting travelers. What was more, and hardly noticeable to the naked eye, was Fey’s ankle high leather boots bouncing off the ground as the aftershock from her magic flooded the forest. The warm surface of her silky skin created an accumulated feeling of tranquility as it poured into her. In due course, she would straighten her back and align her knees with her shoulders to gain the best stance she could create. Fey smirked humbly while the very ground she stood on began to shake as her immeasurable gift transcended.

  “This is nothing, you’ve got this,” she pushed, dusting off her pallid dress. Bits of dirt, root, and grass fell down the knee-high ensemble, resting just short of her toes.

  The exponential drive of her power, which had begun to travel outside her body, became visible to anyone observing the spectacle for miles around and in this moment Fey was vulnerable, but confident she’d chosen the best place to hone her craft. Being in the enchanted forest enabled her to be who her destiny said she had to be, and she need not worry herself with the future any longer. The only thing she had to worry about was getting this exact moment right. Holding onto the past was what got me here in the first place, she remembered.

  Bouts of brilliant weaving neon-blue magic wrapped around her frame, engulfing her in a sapphire web of illusion. If ever she was considered a priceless gem, she was certainly the rarest of them all after she let loose. Her normally well-groomed nails grew to a full-inch longer in length and supernaturally transformed to pure silver as her power surged outward into the treetops. Silver aided witches, preferably Matrons, in controlling their monumental power in their delicate mortal state, and Fey’s were the longest there had ever been. Gradually, her power revealed itself, emanating from her sharp fingertips in bright, taut swirls. The girl stole a moment to marvel at her own creation, glancing down at her illuminated hands in admiration. The striking spectacle reminded her of the beauty in the hottest part of a flame: how it danced lazily back and forth spreading heat to nearby objects. The color her power produced belonged only to the girl. Each witch created her own aura in respect to her inner-strength and that was reflected by her personality.

  Fey’s magic happened to be a vibrant, voltaic blue, and one of the most powerful of all the colors in Edelweiss Pines. She couldn’t remember ever feeling this magnitude of power before, in all her seventeen years; magic saturated each end of her to full-capacity. Feeling a slight yearning to release, it all became so clear. The very relevance of time had stopped completely, and allowed her to experience every movement in the forest in slow motion. Her senses were heightened so much that she could taste the musk of the dark woods on the tip of her tongue and describe every detail of a nearby black bird’s feathers. Her sea green eyes spied a pair of prominent, bold hawks in the sky, hovering over her place of practice. The intrepid feeling of success was realized, and she had truly become one with the power of Mother Nature.

  The whole event was surreal and not all together tangible to the young witch. It hadn’t been that long since she’d opened a metaphorical door in the back of her mind, helping her transgress as far as she’d come today. This door released a fair amount of potential energy unlike anything she’d ever known, especially in the time she had been practicing magic for intellectual purposes. This type of door only opened with certain levels of maturity among young witches in their prime. She was ready to affirm her destiny and pluck her own magical strength from the Vi Magicae tree (Vy Magishay) just as her ancestors had done before her generations past.

  The ancient tree was the only source of power for the families in Edelweiss Pines and If it didn’t exist, there wouldn’t be a single trace of magic trapped inside the barrier surrounding the town. There’d also be no way to keep Fey and the other witches alive, for witches thrived on power alone, and without it, especially with the conditions of their world today—there’d be no surviving. Fey raised her slender arms and willed her bearings to the bowl of water she could now sense in front of her. Opening her curious eyes, she witnessed the surface of the placid fluid transform as a single bead of water floated above the meniscus inside the white porcelain bowl. The drop of water sat suspended in mid-air and had grown to the size of a small child’s fist. Fey leaned in, popping her neck slightly to relieve a crick she’d been carrying since the night before and gasped as the last bit of tension left her form. Here goes nothing, she breathed, letting out the hot air she harbored. Several hours had passed since she began tinkering with Level Two spells and she was determined to get just one right before being forced home.

  The smell of lilac washed over Fey in waves, releasing her sinuses as the essential oils she had slathered on her skin were quite strong, and though she applied them several hours back, she was still moderately aware of their aroma. The oils aided in calming her senses and allowed her magic to gather full force, because at this point, she needed all the help she could get. With strength behind her voice she repeated the enchantment of the spell, closing her glowing viridian eyes and believing in every word.

  “Elementum recolligo huic locus. Commodo mihi vestri vox. Elementum unda ego dico vos. Permissum pluit. Is est meus nos sic vadum is exsisto,” she recited from memory as the declarations rolled off her tongue in a meaningful resonance that seemed to bolster her command.

  She had a distinct feeling that this particular spell would occupy her mind as a permanent imprint. The witch’s Latin-speaking skills had grown at an impeccable rate, so much so, that she could now speak it fluently. This was a base requirement in becoming the next Matron of the White-Coven Witches of Edelweiss Pines. The very stars at night spoke of her family’s history, a lineage that was spread over hundreds of years throughout the vast expanse of celestial ancestors. Her wise Grandmother reminded her every day before she headed off to her private practices, that she needed to do the best she could in taking diligent caution when unleashing her massive power. “You still know not what power you possess. Laziness is not a choice. Our impressionable town needs their leader as strong as a dragon’s backbone. This isn’t to be taken lightly, girl,” Gran Aris would say with both eyes at a slit and a bony finger pointed at the girl. A harmless woman indeed, but only when you were on her good side, she had a few skeletons in her closet and knew more than most.

  If she played her cards right and took the necessary steps to build her magic appropriately, Fey would prove she was ready to begin her long awaited reign. A reign, that would take over where her mother had left off. The aspiring witch had been preparing for the Caster Trials ever since she could remember—and wouldn’t let anything, or
anyone in her way. She wanted to make her mother, wherever she may be, proud of who she’d become, even if it was the last thing she ever did.

  She felt an icy drop of water as it descended the length of her nose, shivering as it trickled down to her rosy, chapped lips. The moisture was a welcoming sentiment after the kind of day she had had. The succession of water repeated several times over as the storm the girl had conjured picked up drastically, gathering its own strength after a time. She eagerly opened her mouth, allowing the pure taste of the rain to caress her dry tongue, the familiar tasteless liquid told her that she’d finally been successful in producing rain. A giddy feeling enveloped her heart, and she let out a bout of uncontrollable laughter as she stepped away from the altar. She couldn’t believe it—she’d finally conjured rain! “I did it!” she squealed, as her eyes shot open with excitement, nearly toppling over her Grandmother’s beloved grimoire in the process.

  Completely absorbed, the girl rushed forward and fleetingly grabbed the wobbly bowl of water sitting atop the wooden perch along with the book, before it could meet a watery grave in the puddles that now propagated the ground. “Gotcha,” she declared, quite thankful for her agile reflexes.

  “Grandmother Aris would tar and feather me if I shattered her glass mixing bowl, let alone her precious spell book!” she supposed warily, clutching everything to her stomach tight. She realized, too late, that the once filled bowl had now emptied its contents all over her white-laced dress.

  Now, not only had the rain drenched her garments, but it also muddied the existing dirt around her. She sat the bowl back down and tried to ring out the water from her clothing. It was a useless idea as the rain was still continuously pouring from the darkening, swirling sky. Too bad I don’t have enough strength to produce an aeration spell and dry out my dress. That’d be just what I need at a time like this, she chuckled half-heartedly when she gave up trying to dry herself.